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Camilla Royle looks at the new climate activism.

The title of this newsletter comes from a poem by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, a poem called This Hour of Chain and Noose (Tauq o dar ka Mausam, 1951).

If you’re waiting for some elite politician to fix this ecological mess you will be hung out to dry well past humanity’s expiration date.

“Each number presented here corresponds to the face of a Venezuelan woman, a man, a boy, a girl. It is not only about the economic impact on imports or production, it is about the impact that these economic aggressions have on the guarantee of the human rights of each Venezuelan” –Pasqualina Curcio, The Impact of the Economic War Against the People of Venezuela.

‘Our aim is to create moments in time when humanity stops and fully considers the extent of the harm we have done’.

How can we reconcile social struggle and environmental struggle? This question poses problems for trade unionists.

The media calls them armed thugs and US Senator Marco Rubio wants them put on the terrorist list, but who are Venezuela’s colectivos (collectives)? Green Left Weekly’s Federico Fuentes met with some of them to find out.

The US military and CIA launder coup propaganda through popular first-person shooter video games like Call of Duty, simulating assassinations of Venezeula’s socialist leader and sabotage of its electrical infrastructure.

The work of a radical artist and intellectual should be carried out in the manner of a gentle breeze and mild rain. It cannot be done with haste. It should be done over a long period and done patiently.

President Trump’s corporate and income tax cuts enriched corporations, satisfied those already employed and flush with money, and did little to stimulate the national economy.

Governments and central banks that were upbeat about global economic recovery are turning pessimistic. A coordinated fiscal stimulus across nations is the need of hour.

The first time I saw a collective in action and what it’s capable of, I was just a little kid. I’d been, about nine, maybe ten. That takes us back to 1969, in the hills of Los Frailes in Catia, in the upper part of the Macayapa neighbourhood, at the foot of the Waraira Repano.

Bob Dylan once said, “Let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.” February 23rd, 2019, was the day that Juan Guaidó, the self-proclaimed President of Venezuela, had “authorized” “humanitarian aid” to enter Venezuela, an attempt to force the Maduro government, and thus the Venezuelan people, to their knees.

Today marks the latest international day of action for the student climate strike movement. The task ahead is to channel the energy and radicalism of the strikes into the labour movement and fight for a social alternative.

Western capitalists are to blame largely for climatic changes that causes natural and environmental disasters. Poverty, which is a result of the diabolic and pernicious economic sanctions, has forced the poor to build poor and weak structures that do not withstand the heavy winds and storms.

By working three jobs while in college and with some financial assistance from her mother, Karen Hawkins managed to pay off her undergraduate loans of US$12,000 eight years after completing her bachelor’s degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

I’ve been to see Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy several times, mainly when Rafael Correa was President and the Embassy felt like a liberated space. A few weeks ago I met him again. By now Correa’s successor, Lenín Moreno, had capitulated on every level to the American Empire.

Against all imperialist logic, the Venezuelan people refuse to be subjugated.

The North American intelligence agencies and their government’s attention and monitoring of the electricity situation in Venezuela is long-standing. This was confirmed by more than 1,000 documents released by Wikileaks which mention the status of the National Electric System in Venezuela and the Simón Bolívar Hydroelectric Plant located in Guri.

What a Western Electric advert from 1944 can teach us about Google and Facebook.